In his weekly radio address, Bush praised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for what he called "courageous" steps in the withdrawal from Gaza Strip, and said President Abbas must meet the Israeli withdrawal with action against what he called terrorists."Now that Israel has withdrawn, the way forward is clear. The Palestinians must show the world that they will fight terrorism and govern in a peaceful way."We demand an end to terrorism and violence in every form because we know that progress depends on ending terror," Bush said.Fearing that Hamas might take over control over Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, President Bush again demanded that Palestinians authority provides governance over the strip.

I think this is profound: the whole world is watching the Palestinians, now. The president has put them on notice. And the Arabs are watching too. Will the Palestinians do what they promised to do in ther Roadmap, or will they continue to use genocidal terror to attempt to destroy Israel altogether? We shall see.

I no longer believe a "third way" is possible: a low level "intifada" waged against Irael by terrorists whom the PNA claims they can't control (without starting a civil war) -- which is what we have had up until now. NOW, we have something new: Israel is prepared to unilaterally disengage from the West Bank and to keep all of Jerusalem and will then consider the matter COMPLETELY CLOSED FOREVER. there will be no refugee settlement - ever. And if they're attacked by Gazan Arabs or West Bank Arabs - then Israel will be free to retaliate with a force heretofore UNSEEN, (because up until now the Israelis were legally responsible for the Arabs in the disputed/"occupied" territories).

ANOTHER THING: unless and until the Palestinian Arabs are willing to actually fight the jihadoterrorists - like the Paksitanis, and the Saudis, and the Afghanis, and the Iraqis HAVE BEEN - the Palestinians will have NO STATE, and deserve NO RESPECT.

PITY: if the PNA did take on the jihadoterrorists they'd have the support of the Free World. They are, instead - I am sadly predicting - SQUANDERING their last best chance. Pity.

From a letter to the WSJ via BETSY'S PAGE (who credits THE ANCHORESS via Cartago Delenda Est):Iraq is just like Vietnam except: We occupy Hanoi. We've captured Ho Chi Minh. The North Vietnamese have just held a free and democratic election. The North Vietnamese are working on a new constitution. Yes, Iraq is just like Vietnam.And er um .. to further the "analogy" : it's only 1967!

There is one analogy that does translate from Vietnam to Iraq: the Left is actively aiding the enemy and undercutting our efforts to spread democracy and halt the spread of totalitarianism. I KNOW: I WAS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY IN THE 1960's-70's: I WAS AN ANTI-VIETNAM LEFTIE, THEN! BUT REAGAN PROVED ME - AND THE ENITRE LEFT WAS WRONG.

Police in the German city of Hamburg said on Saturday they had released three Chechen men who sparked a major security alert after they were overheard at a bus stop talking about becoming "heroes before Allah". "After investigation we have ruled out any threat of a terrorist attack by these men," a police spokesman said, adding the three had been freed during Friday night. ... The search for the men, aged from 21 to 25, on Thursday involved a large-scale manhunt in which more than 1,000 officers put up overnight roadblocks and scoured Germany's second city. The witness (AN EGYPTIAN) became suspicious and tipped off the police after hearing one of them say: "Tomorrow we will stand as heroes before Allah." “It isn’t impossible that it was the result of a bad joke,” said the city state’s interior minister Udo Nagel.

Some joke! Maybe they should be charged with a TERRORIST HOAX (a crime HERE and the UK and Germany and even in Canada) and BILLED for the costs of extraordinary police efforts.

The difference betweem Vietnam today and what South Vietnam MIGHT have been - if the Lefties in the Democrat Party hadn't pulled the plug - is just as stark. If the Left hadn't pulled the plug on the South Vietnamese government in 1975, then the South of Vietnam would be as rich and as free as the South Korea. We might be driving SOUTH VIETNAMESE cars instead of South Korean cars!

Why do I bring this up!? Well, because many on the Left question whether we can IMPOSE freedom on any people or culture. As if some people or some type of people are "READY" for freedom and others are not.

Well, we did "impose" freeedom on the South Koreans, and IT WORKED. Just as it worked on the Japanese and the Germans. And in all those cases it required that we keep 50,000 troops in the theater FOR DECADES to accomplish it, and THAT wasn't questioned (just like our continued troop presence in Bosnia is never questioned). It was accepted that it was worth it. We had troops in German and Japan for 50 years. We only have troops in Iraq for 2. So let's take a DEEP BREATH. AHHHHH! Exhale. Good. We can do this.

Well, so, now - after only two years - keeping troops in Iraq IS questioned - all the time. Lefties - who dominate the MSM - ask: "when will we withdraw?"over-and-over-and-over again as if that was the be-all-end-all question, and as if WINNING mattered not.

Winning matters. Freedom matters. If you believe that all men and women were created equal, then you must believe that we - as the oldest and richest and strongest democacy on Earth - have a responsibility to help our brothers and sisters EVERYWHERE re-establish their innate FREEDOM. As we are doing in Iraq. Even if it means we will have to maintain SOME troop presence there for many years. As we did in europe and Asia. FDR believed that was okay. JFK did too.

This effort in Iraq will make the world FREER, and safer and richer. And that is good. People who oppose it are either misinformed or bad. Or maybe, they just want other people to stay in the DARK!

THREE Chechen men who sparked a massive police search in the northern German city of Hamburg after being overheard allegedly planning an attack are in custody.One of the men was arrested and the other two had turned themselves in, Hamburg Police chief Reinhard Chedor said. ... Mr Chedor said he was convinced the trio were the suspects caught on film by a surveillance camera boarding a bus in Hamburg on Wednesday. A witness said by police to be reliable had overheard the men talking about becoming martyrs. One had allegedly said: "Tomorrow we will be heroes for Allah". ... The city's interior minister, Udo Nagel, admitted the size of the police operation had been dictated by fears of attacks similar to those on three Underground trains and a bus in London that killed 56 people, including the four suicide bombers, last month. Three of the suicide hijackers from the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US lived and studied in Hamburg. Last week, a Moroccan national, Mounir el Motassadeq, was jailed by a court in the city for seven years for belonging to a terrorist organisation.

The arrests might have a thwarted attack. We shall never ever know. Better safe than sorry.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Kos - that Left-wing slimeball nutcase idiotarian scumsuckipiece of sheiss - tried to argue that BLUE states were sacrificing more in Iraq than Red states - (AS IF RED vs. BLUE were relevant to our jihaodterrorist enemies in the GWOT!) - and he argued this by posting a map which seemed to show that BLUE states were "filled" with little dots for each combat death in Iraq, and RED states were less filled (or that CLUSTERS of dots were in BLUE CITIES. Nevermind that many BLUE states are smaller than RED states (so FEWER dots would fill them up); nevermind that cities are more demnsley populated than rural counties so OF COURSE (if casualties are spread out over the WHOLE nation's population, the cities will APPEAR to have denser clusters of dots.

THE RESULTS? Simple: RED STATES SACRIFICE MORE. Of course, anyone with an ounce of intutiton could have predicted that. HOW? Well, where do you think more Marines and Airmen and Soliders and Seaman come from: THE UPPER WEST SIDE OR MISSISSPPI?! BERKLEY OR MONTANA?! The answer is obvious; the anti-war counties - and I mean anti-Vietnam War and the Granada Invasion, anti-Gulf War - (heck, these guys were even for unliateral disarmament in the Cold War!) - counties like Manhattan (where I live!) - do NOT contribute as many people to our national defense or our armed forces than people in Red counties.

PROOF IS HERE. Click over and look at his stats. Here's my summary analysis:

Of the top ten 80% are RED. Of the states which have had MORE THAN 1/100,000 , 80% are RED. Of the BOTTOM 75% are BLUE STATES, ALL WITH TWO DEMOCRAT SENATORS.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS PROVE? Well, that Kos got this exactly WRONG. Which is typical. Of Kos and the Left. They are wrong ALL THE TIME. They are never right. And it also proves that Red staters are not hypocrites or chickenhawks.

German police published grainy pictures of three possible terrorist suspects on Friday but said they had so far failed to locate them despite a huge manhunt in the northern port city of Hamburg. More than 1,000 police were deployed overnight in Germany's second city to search for three men who were overheard at a bus stop by an Arabic-speaking witness, speaking of becoming "heroes before Allah." One was carrying a backpack. Fuzzy pictures of the three men, captured by a surveillance camera aboard a crowded bus, were posted on the Internet, shown on television and splashed across newspaper front pages. A police spokeswoman said overnight roadblocks around the city had now been lifted but the investigation to trace the three men was continuing, with the help of clues from the public. "We have 25 clues so far but there is no hot lead," she said, adding no arrests had been made. The spokeswoman said security authorities had judged the large-scale public manhunt to be justified and it was too early to speak of a false alarm. The alert came less than a week after a Hamburg court sentenced a Moroccan man, Mounir El Motassadeq, to seven years in jail for belonging to the group of Hamburg-based Arab students who led the September 11 attacks on the United States. He was friends with three of the suicide pilots who carried out the 2001 attacks, including Mohamed Atta, the man who rammed the first of four hijacked planes into the World Trade Center.

Let's hope they catch them BEFORE they attack in Germany - or elsewhere. Stay tuned...

[ASIDE: many news-services - so-called - are headlining this item AS IF the hunt was called off and it was determined to be a false-alarm. WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS!? Could they be skeptical about the GWOT? Naw, ya think!? Sheesh.]

Thursday, August 25, 2005

More than 1,000 German police were deployed in a large-scale search for three terror suspects in the north German port city of Hamburg on Thursday, a police spokesman said. Roadblocks and controls were set up at 12 points in Germany's second city after an Arabic-speaking witness overheard the men at a bus stop on Wednesday, praising Allah and heroism in Arabic. One of the men was carrying a backpack. ... Hamburg, which has been put on terror alert several times in the past four years, was the home of a group of radical Arab students led by Mohamed Atta, the man who rammed the first of four hijacked planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Last Friday, a friend of the September 11 suicide pilots was found guilty in a Hamburg court of belonging to a terrorist group, though the court ruled that he knew too little of their plans to convict him on a second charge of abetting mass murder.

The 7/7 attacks in London occurred around the time of the trial of a major jihadist in London - so there is reason to believe that jihadists might try something in Hamburg to coincide with the recent trial there, too. (More about Hamburg's connection to jihadoterrorism HERE.) ALSO: Remember that the Germans have a national election coming up, and the jihadoterrorists in Hamburg MIGHT be trying to do to the German electorate what they did to the Spanish electorate - get them to cower in fear and then elect an anti-American pacifistic socialist by staging a series of horrific terrorist attacks.

I was pondering the Left's hypocrisy when it comes to RACE, so I GOOGLE'd it and found this article from FRONTPAGE (7/2002):

It’s the left whose cynical abandonment of its own color-blind standard created racial preferences, which are an obvious form of racial profiling. Having marched in the Sixties to establish the principle of color-blindness, the left switched sides in the Seventies to support the principle it had just successfully opposed. Its rationale for embracing the profiling principle in the guise of "affirmative action" was that it was necessary to use racism to combat racism (although it is politically incorrect to express it so bluntly). This was the gravamen of the infamous Blackmun opinion in the Baake decision, which held that it may be necessary to take race into account to get beyond it. This is the most widely embraced Orwellian principle in our culture today. It allows the cynical manipulators of race on the left to smear conservative civil rights activists who oppose race-consciousness and race-privilege as "racists." It allows the left to call itself a "civil rights" movement even while it embraces the very principle that made segregation possible, and even though it is the conservative opposition that has remained faithful to the civil rights standard set by King and the hundreds of thousands who marched on Washington in 1963.

... Security profiles should be designed to protect law-abiding citizens from likely criminal predators. Profiles that include the ethnicity or race of potential suspects - but are not limited to those characteristics -- do not constitute "racial profiling" in any meaningful sense of the term. The inclusion of race in a security profile is in itself as harmless as the inclusion of gender or height or any other identifying characteristic. It does not imply racism on the part of the profilers. On the other hand, rigging admissions or contract standards for selected racial groups, does. The security profile is based on process. The racial preference profile is based on result. It is the sole purpose of affirmative-action racial preferences to achieve a race-specific result. They are designed to target racial groups for racial privileges. This is what segregation and apartheid were all about. The means and the end were identical.

This is not what the security profiling demanded by conservatives is about at all. Conservatives do not want Muslims to be arrested as terrorists if they are innocent. The profile is not constructed out of a desire to stigmatize Muslims as terrorists. It is based on already established incidences of terror and is intended to heighten awareness of where the danger may be coming from. To raise suspicions about groups whose members have in fact targeted innocents for harm bears no relation to ethnic or racial prejudice as long as the suspicions are not raised solely by ethnicity or race. An unintended side effect may to raise suspicions towards members of the group who are innocent. But this is not the same as convicting them. Causing inconvenience to innocents is regrettable but it is a price people regardless of ethnicity or race are willing to pay for safety. It is a characteristic of all preventive programs that innocents will be screened along with the guilty. But the ultimate target is the guilty and not the innocent, and the guilty may turn out to be of any ethnicity or race. In affirmative action measures, by contrast, the target itself is racial.

The war in which we are now engaged is a war with radical Islam. All the terrorists who have targeted us are Muslim and/or Arab. Not to have heightened suspicions of Muslims and Arabs in these circumstances is mindless, not to say suicidal. To draw conclusions solely on the basis of the fact that people are Muslims or Arabs would be unwarranted and prejudiced. But conservatives are not calling for the convictions of Muslims or Arabs on the basis of their ethnicity.

ME: The Left thinks it's fine to explicitly use race to determine economic outcomes (and in hiring and admissions), but not to assist law enforcement. THAT'S SIMPLY HYPOCRITICAL. What makes this even worse is that the Left thinks that the jihadoterrorism is a law enforcement problem (as opposed to a military one), and yet they want law enforcement to be hindered through (a) preventing them from using race as part of a profile, and (b) preventing law enforcement from getting information that might be used in domestic cases from the CIA or from newly expanded search warrant powers which are part of the Patriot Act. THIS HYPOCRISY exposes the deeper truth: the Left doesn't really care about national security. If they did, then they wouldn't find so many ways to hinder our law enforcers at home, and our military efforts overseas.

"... three main factors causing the high rates among the Arabs: infections, home births, and diseases resulting from inbreeding. About 40 percent of Muslim and Druze women and 70 percent of Bedouin women in the region were found to be married to first- or second-degree relatives. ... a 1989 study in Iraq found 53 percent of the subjects to be consanguineously married. One result is the prevalence of extended clans that lead to nepotism and lower levels of identification with the state. The clan structure is a major factor in the Arab world’s endemic corruption and lack of civil society. ... inbreeding is also a major cause of disease, another conclusion seems inescapable. Just as modern medicine recognizes genetic sources of many physical illnesses, modern psychology recognizes genetic components in many psychological problems including criminality. Presumably, a region where inbreeding is rife—and reinforced through successive generations—should also have a greater frequency of such mental ailments. ... Skeptics about attempts to reform or democratize the Arab world often point to Islam as a factor more fundamental than political practices such as elections. It seems they should also emphasize the separate problem of inbreeding.

More on this in my previous posts on the subject and related matters - HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. Scientific studies of this serious problem HERE and HERE.

Sheesh, no wonder the Left is anti-war: all they read/watch is the Left-wing dominated MSM, and the MSM lies and distorts the news in order to propagandize against the war. Here's more proof from the folks at POWERLINE, in the form of TWO MUST READS:

The parents of a brain-damaged baby at the centre of a battle over her right to life are to try again to overturn a court order not to resuscitate her. At the Court of Appeal, Darren and Debbie Wyatt, from Portsmouth, will present a letter from doctors saying Charlotte has made remarkable progress. The 22-month-old has serious lung, brain and kidney damage. Doctors at St Mary's Hospital, in Portsmouth, won the legal right not to resuscitate her last October. They had argued that her brain and other organs were so seriously damaged that she had "no feeling other than continuing pain". But she is now said to respond to loud noise and bright images, and even smiles. Charlotte, who was born three months prematurely, spends most of her time in an oxygen box, but is taken out to be cuddled by her parents when they visit. At a hearing in April this year, Mr Justice Hedley renewed the court order allowing hospital doctors to let her die.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT - WHICH CONTROLS THE COURTS AND THE HOSPITALS - WANTS THE DOCTORS TO BE ABLE TO "PULL THE PLUG OUT" AGAINST THE PARENTS WISHES. Now if this was your baby, who would you want to MAKE THE DECISION: the doctors or you?

And what's all this BS this about PAIN: the Left claimed a brain-damaged Terri Schiavo felt no pain when they starved her to death; the Left claims now that before 25 weeks a fetus feels no pain (even though it responds to touch); and NOW AGAIN, the Left claims that a 22 MONTH OLD brain-damaged baby can ONLY FEEL PAIN. There is NO CONSISTENCY TO THE POSITIONS OF THE LEFT - EXCEPT EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY ARE ON THE SIDE OF DEATH.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Two environmental groups and four U.S. cities may sue U.S. federal agencies which finance overseas projects which they say contribute to global warming, a federal judge has ruled. The two federal agencies -- Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank of the United States -- had asked the U.S. District Court ... to dismiss the lawsuit. It was brought by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the cities of Boulder, Colorado, and Santa Monica, Oakland and Arcata, California.

Judge Jeffrey White ruled on Tuesday that U.S. law allows the groups and cities to proceed with their lawsuit because they may be affected by overseas agency-backed projects whose emissions are linked to global warming. "The landmark decision is the first time that a federal court has specifically granted legal standing for a lawsuit exclusively alleging injury from global warming and challenging the federal government's failure to evaluate the impacts of its actions on the Earth's climate and U.S. citizens," the Friends of the Earth said in a statement on its Web site.

GUESS WHERE THIS JUDGES SITS? RIGHT: San Francisco. Where else. Sheesh.

Allowing this suit to proceed is as stupid as allowing crime victims to sue gun manufacturers for crimes commited by third party criminals with their gun products. This is even MORE bizarre: The plaintiffs "say" that the federal agencies contribute to "global warming" and the judge seems to accept this on their say-so. DOUBLE SHEESH!

It's another example of how the Left uses the courts (which are populated with Leftist/activist judges) - to undemocratically impose their ideology and inane policies on the rest of us. It is insane envirofascism at its worst. (UPDATE: more from the WASH POST/AP.)

Disgraced Pakistani scientist AQ Khan supplied North Korea with centrifuges and their designs, President Pervez Musharraf has confirmed. Centrifuges enrich uranium which can be used for making nuclear bombs. It is the first time Pakistan has given details about the type of technology Dr Khan transferred to Pyongyang. ... Dr Khan has admitted leaking nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Pakistan's government has always denied any involvement. ... Dr Khan has been under house arrest since his public confession in February 2004 that he illegally transferred nuclear technology to countries including North Korea, Libya and Iran. The man still regarded by many Pakistanis as a national hero was given a pardon by President Musharraf because of his services to the nation's nuclear industry. Dr Khan has not been allowed to receive visitors and international investigators probing global nuclear proliferation have not been allowed to question him. Pakistan this year confirmed Dr Khan had supplied nuclear centrifuges to Iran. President Musharraf has previously said the discovery of the Khan network was the most embarrassing episode in his political career.

EMBARRASSMENT AND DISGRACE ARE NOT ENOUGH. HOUSE ARREST (AFTER AN UNPARDONABLE PARDON) IS NOT ENOUGH. AQ KHAN AND HIS "NUCLEAR CRIME NETWORK" HAVE DONE MORE TO DESTABILIZE THE WORLD THAN ANYONE EXCEPT BINLADEN. HE SHOULD BE ARRESTED - FOR REAL- TRIED BY A MILITARY TRIBUNAL, AND WHEN HE IS CONVICTED... SHOT DEAD. MORAL CLARITY AND SIMPLE JUSTICE DEMAND IT.

Prime Minister John Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spies monitoring the nation's mosques.... Howard said that while the government had no wish to interfere with the freedom and practice of religion, he supported sending people into mosques and Islamic schools to make sure nobody was promoting support for violence or extremism. "We have a right to know whether there is, within any section of the Islamic community, a preaching of the virtues of terrorism, whether any comfort or harbour is given to terrorism within that community," Howard told Australian radio.

Howard is RIGHT, and we here in the USA ought to be doing the same; if the mosques are where the jihadoterrorists meet and plan and recruit, then it is where we must find them and confront them. If the clerics and their followers don't like it, then they can EITHER tell the jihadoterrorists to leave or tell us who they are, and we'll "take care of them!"

I think the best candidate for the job is TOM RIDGE: he could hold all the Bush/Blue states PLUS pick up Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I think he'd have an easier time holding Ohio and picking up the Midwestern states which Bush did well in, but did not carry. Ridge is a former governor, a 6-term Congressman, and a decorated Vietnam Vet. He is a Roman Catholic. Paired with a southern or Midwestern Protestant, (like Allen or Pawlenty), he'd be unstoppable. Even paired with fellow Catholic Jeb, he'd still be unstoppable. He is a warm man and a tireless and effective candidate - you DON'T win the guvnaship in PA and hold it very popularly by being a stiff. He is tough on crime, too. He is a pro-choice Catholic, like Giuliani - which hurts them both. Otherwise, he has a lot less baggage than Rudy. (The jerk Hagel is 41-to-one. MORE ON HAGEL HERE - at ABP, hat tip MICHELLE MALKIN.)

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

PARIS, Aug. 23 - A two-year European initiative to discourage Iran from producing its own nuclear fuel appeared to be stymied today when negotiators called off the next round of talks with Tehran. The talks, which had been planned for Aug. 31, were supposed to focus on a European proposal that was submitted to the Iranian government this month. But France, which along with Germany and Britain has spearheaded the talks with Tehran, said Iran's decision to resume nuclear fuel activities that could constitute a first step in producing atomic weapons made a continuation of the negotiations impossible. "We can't continue with formal negotiations as if nothing happened," said the chief spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, Jean-Baptiste Mattéi. "The suspension of their fuel activities was the basis for our negotiations," Mr. Mattéi said. "By resuming some of those activities the Iranians have effectively suspended the agreement these talks were based on." "The next step is the I.A.E.A. report on Sept. 3, and then the board of governors has to decide what to do," Mr. Mattéi said.

The IAEA is USELESS. When September 3 rolls along, nothing will happen that will bring the crisis to a good conclusion. It will be time for much MUCH blunter tools to be used... Stay tuned... Previous posts on Iranian nukes and the useless IAEA HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. Suggestions for TOUGH U.S. action from THE BIG PHAROAH hat tip AMERICAN THINKER.

New York's subway and bus operator said on Tuesday it awarded a $212 million contract for surveillance cameras, motion detectors and other equipment to detect potential attacks against its stations, bridges and tunnels.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin will lead a team of companies in a deal struck with North America's largest transportation network just one month after bombers attacked the London transit system on July 7, killing 52 people. The $212 million will be the first major piece of a $591 million security plan approved in 2002. Before the Lockheed deal, only $42 million had been earmarked. Lockheed will install 1,000 cameras and 3,000 sensors under the three-year deal that aims to eventually allow the New York Metropolitan Transportation to stop attacks before they happen by spotting unattended packages that may contain bombs and alerting its employees to unauthorized intruders in its tunnels and other sensitive areas.

HOW SOON BEFORE THE ACLU SUES TO STOP THEM? After all, this would be an unreasonable encroachment of our privacy - 'cause when we're in the subway our privacy is our chief concern. Yeah, sure. And how soon after that will the first DU'er charge that this is another example of BusHitler/Cheney/AshKKroft/Halliburton war-machine buddies profiteering off of their phony "endless war" - after all, the contract is going to LOCKHEED - a major defense contractor!

Hiring a military contractor to create a security system is a fateful step in the authority's counterterrorism efforts, which have proceeded haltingly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2002, the authority set aside $591 million for counterterrorism, but as of last month had spent only a fraction of that amount. It has come under pressure to move faster. ... The New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a legal challenge to the bag-search policy, said it was worried about abuses. "There are questions about both the value and the privacy implications of massive video surveillance in the subways," said Donna Lieberman, its executive director. ... A handful of subway riders interviewed at Times Square yesterday expressed strong support for electronic surveillance.

So what about John Kerry's record on releasing documents. He is now out front calling for a release of documents "in their entirety" for that period of John Roberts' professional life. Mr. Kerry, the presidential candidate, promised on Meet the Press in April of 2004 to release his full military file, including medical records. He said they were available already to anyone who wanted to come to his office. But the next day, when a reporter took him up on his offer, he was turned away. Later on, the Kerry campaign did release a few hundred pages of documents and posted them on their website. But it was only May of this year that Mr. Kerry finally signed the privacy-waiver form, and it only initially released the documents to the Boston Globe, a very friendly paper whose star reporter, Michael Kranish, is also one of Mr. Kerry's biographers. The documents were released in June to the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, along with the Globe. A couple of reporters, independent journalist Thomas Lipscomb and Josh Gersten of the New York Sun, have stayed on this story, trying to make the records available for everyone to examine, as Kerry had promised. Some bloggers and the Swift Boat Veterans continue to question the terms and timing of Kerry's discharge, why his medals and decorations were reissued in 1985, and the records on his battlefield encounters.

The hypocrisy of the Left knows no bounds. It's why they supported regime change against Saddam while there was a DEMOCRAT in office, but not while there's a conservative in office. And why decades of one-party control of the Congress and the White House was hunkie-dorrie when it was held by the Dems. And why they thought it was fine for Democrat presidents to speak about God, but not Bush - and why it was fine for MLK Jr. to use his profound faith to inspire political change, but not any conservative preachers. And why they actually made it tougher for the minority to fillibuster while they were the majority party, yet argue against ANY changes now that they're the minority. It's also why they can demand using what are essentially quotas to "end" racial discrimination!

The Democrat Party - like all Leftist parties has only one principle, and is - in the final analysis - only really concerned with and focused on concentrating power in their hands and then using that power to pick winners and losers. NOT TO WORRY: This Leftist program has always ended up reducing liberty and prosperity, and therefore it has always ended in political failure. Remember, Carter and Gorbachev and Mao were "defeated" by Teng and Rao and Reagan and Thatcher. Tyrants - big and small - always will be, too. Thank God!

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined. ... Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.

Iran built its nuclear program in secret over 18 years with the help of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a top Pakistani official and nuclear scientist who sold spare parts from his country's own weapons program to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Khan's black-market dealings were uncovered in 2003. He confessed on national television, was swiftly pardoned by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and is now under house arrest. ... The IAEA, in its third year of an investigation in Iran, has not found proof of a weapons program. But a few serious questions, some connected to Iran's involvement with Khan, remain unanswered.

Er... um, wouldn't it be a good idea TO GET TRUTHFUL answers to all the outstanding questions, and to get full access for complete inspections BEFORE we "clear" the Iranians!? Sheesh. I think that Iran's two decades of deceit PROVES more about their intentions and their trustworthiness than all the assays by international scientists.

The emailed letter is exactly 1810 words. Not one of them is Iraq. Not one of them is terror. Not one of them is jihad or Muslim.

She opened by writing: "As the Congress prepares to return to Washington following the August recess, I want to take this opportunity to update you on the issues that have been, or will be, before the United States Congress."She closed by writing: "It is an enormous honor and privilege to represent the State of New York. As the 109th Congress moves forward, I will continue to focus on the issues that matter to New York's families, and I am committed to working with New Yorkers from every part of the state to make New York more secure, more prosperous and more filled with opportunity for everyone."

I guess that the issues which might make us New Yorkers (us folks who live in the home state of the worst 9/11 attack, the WTC - a spot, now christened GROUND A ZERO, which is a scant 1.5 miles from my home!) more secure and prosperous have NOTHING to do with the war on terror, or Iraq or the Middle East or Afghanistan or anywhere else we're confronting evil regimes with the potential to reek GLOBAL harm: including Iran and North Korea.

Her parochial-ness and her glaringly deep denial of the gravity of WW4 are astounding when one considers she wants to be president. IOW: this letter makes her seem very VERY UN-presidential. Thank God. Then again, she IS only running for re-election to the Senate... FOR NOW!

[ASIDE: contrary to what you may have read EARLIER at THE MODERATE VOICE (he has since corrected it - thanks Joe!), I am a registered Democrat - and have been since 1974. I supported Clinton in 1991 because he was running as a centrist and a moderate and to the right of GHW Bush on China. Clinton saved the Democrat Party - for a time, but then really governed as a liberal (who ignored the jihadoterrorist threat). Now, the Democrat Party has once again been taken over by the Left - as it was in 1972. May I remind you that 1972 was the HEIGHT of the anti-war movement (which I particiated in) and that EVEN THEN the Left took the party to one electoral defeat after another. The Left will have the same effect on the party now: marginializing it even further. And make o mistake about it: the Left runs the party. Not a single national Democrat criticized Durbin for his outgraeous comments on the floor of the Senate. Pelosi and Durbin appeared with Belafonte when he made his most recent outrageous charges, and they said not a word, WHY?! Because they are Leftists or cowed by Leftists. And that's why Zell Miller is right when he says that the Democrat Party is a national party, no more.

Monday, August 22, 2005

BBC: Plans for the world's first completely silent aircraft have been unveiled by Cambridge University engineers. Environmental campaigners and people living on flight paths have already welcomed the campaign to build the jet. Now it could become a reality some time in the next decade ... The new aircraft is basically a flying wing and would be inaudible once it left the airport.

I could go on and on and ON, but LET'S ARBITRARILY STOP AT A BAKER'S DOZEN!

All of these "predictions" - or "analyses" if you will - were WRONG!

What makes Leftists so prone to outrageously negative predictions!?

I think it's because of two things. FIRST: When the Wall fell and the USSR collapsed their left0wing utopianist illusion collapsed, and that is just too effin' hard to accept; it's easier to say (hope and pray!) that the West will collapse too, and to belive that after THAT collapse, that Leftism/progressivism will enjoy a renaissance. SECOND: Leftists have ALWAYS been prone to occult or esoteric thinking. Marx said look beneath the surface and behind what people SAY they're motivated by and follow the money; he argued that EVERYTHING was really about ECONOMICS - that behind and beneath every action was MONEY, and to understand the conflict between people throughout history that you had to understand Marxism. Freud - another favorite of the Left - said EVERYTHING was sexual; he argued that the true secret motivation to everything - lurking behind and beneath everything - was SEX! An absolutely unintelligible esoteric combination of Marx and freud was done by - WHO ELSE - a Frenchman, Jacques Lacan. The fact that he is popular in France says everything you need to know about him and the French academy!

You get the picture. The Left is deep in denial, and they find safe haven in esoteric conspiracy theories and occult explanations to explain why things have always turned out so so so VERY very differently than how they were told it was all gonna turn out by their Leftist teachers.

BOTTOM-LINE: The RIGHT was right, after all. And as a former Leftist - raised by one-time card-carrying members of Soviet directed cells - all I can tell my Leftist former friends: "Come, join the right-side of the political spectrum; you'll find the experience very liberating." Pun intended.

I think the answer is Saudi Arabia. They seem to be killing the most al Qaeda terrorists and they seem to be able to kill or capture big-shots, too. (This in spite of the fact that they might very well be the spiritual center of jiahdism, and their ruling family and their spy services and their army may be riddled with jihadists.) Meanwhile, Musharraf and Karzai seem unable to help us even locate Binladen or Zawahiri or Mullah Omar. And everyday, jihadists seem to be pouring into Iraq - as if the borders were non-existent - possibly infiltrating the police and nascent Iraqi Army. It seesm to me AT THE VERY LEAST, Iraqis ought to be able to maintain effective borders.

The problems which Pakistan and Iraq and Afgahnistan are having reveal the basic problem with WW4: as long as Muslim governments are ambiguous or ambivalent about fighting the enemy, NOTHING we do can completely eliminate the enemy. And a virtual stalemate ensues. Thius stalemate is VERY DANGEROUS because WW4 - like all wars - needs the support of the American people, and the Left and the Democrats have no compunction about using the sense of stalemate to slam the president and the war, and thereby erode popular support for the war -- which directly aids the enemy. Setting an artificial deadline for withdrawal, and setting an incredibly low-level of acceptable casualties for us in the war, are just two ways the Left undermines popular support for the war and thereby aids the enemy.

Therefore, I think we need to putting MUCH more pressure on the half-hearted allies (Pakistan, Jordan, Afghanistan) - by making our aid, and trade, and loans and insurance - and the "umbrella" protection of the US armed forces - CONDITIONAL on how well the fight the enemy. The "US OR THEM" / "with us or against us" stance of Bush immediately after 9/11 still makes the mnost sense to me now. We just need to put more teeth in it. And let's start by issuing ultimatums to Syria and Iran on their border control: "If one more jihadist or one more bomb gets through then we will cruise-missile attck yopu military until it's dust." SOUND TOO TOUGH TO YOU!? Hell, this is war, and war is hell.